Hong Kong’s stock watchdog yesterday took the rare step of saying China Huishan Dairy Holdings Co (中國輝山乳業) shares cannot resume trading without its approval, leaving stakeholders in limbo.
Huishan’s shares have been frozen since they tumbled 85 percent on March 24.
The Securities & Futures Commission (SFC) will need to give the go-ahead for any resumption of trading, under a rule that allows the market regulator to halt shares when there is evidence of misleading, false or incomplete information.
The SFC invoked the same rule against Hanergy Thin Film Power Group Ltd (漢能薄膜發電集團) in 2015 in the wake of a similar one-day plunge.
The news is the latest challenge for Huishan, which has turned into a poster child for weak corporate governance and the dangers of leverage in China.
Chairman Yang Kai (楊凱) has lost his board of directors, after two executive directors last month joined a flood of departures since the stock’s collapse. Huishan hired Deloitte Advisory of Hong Kong last month to analyze its financial position.
The suspension means shareholders can no longer transfer their shares through over-the-counter trading, said Castor Pang (彭偉新), head of research at Core-Pacific Yamaichi (京華山一) in Hong Kong.
“There’s nothing shareholders can do,” Pang said. “If the SFC is suspending the shares, shareholders would not be able to transfer the title and register with the company registry. The SFC during the last 10 years hasn’t done this very often.”
The sight of multibillion-dollar stocks collapsing in minutes in the territory has deterred investors and raised questions about Hong Kong’s role as one of Asia’s premier trading hubs. Huishan’s plunge wiped out US$4.1 billion of market value in less than 90 minutes.
Hang Fat Ginseng Holdings Co (恒發洋參控股), Hanergy and Tech Pro Technology Development Ltd (德普科技) have all suffered crashes similar to Huishan’s in the past two years. Tech Pro, a provider of LED lighting products, fell 86 percent in 17 minutes in July, while Hang Fat Ginseng plunged 91 percent in an hour in January last year. Eight months before that, solar panel manufacturer Hanergy dropped 47 percent, wiping out US$19 billion of market value in 24 minutes.
Hanergy shares remain halted. The Chinese solar-equipment maker reached a deal with the SFC in January on the requirements and procedures for a resumption of trading.
The agreement came after the SFC said it was seeking court orders to disqualify the company’s four directors and the former chairman, Li Hejun (李河君).
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained